unions

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine [l to r] walk the picket line this week with striking News Guild CWA workers. Photo and video by Bob Hennelly

“The bosses wear Prada, and the workers get nada!” chanted hundreds of News Guild CWA workers out on a one-day strike against Condé Nast, the publishing juggernaut that owns iconic titles like Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Bon Appetite. The boisterous picket line at the base of One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on a damp day January 24, drew a cacophony of honking horns whizzing by on West Street.

After a widely lauded voluntary recognition of the union back in 2022 by the privately-held global media conglomerate, the union has run into what it told Work-Bites is hardball union-busting tactics that have really intensified with the New Year. Back in October, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch announced the company would be shrinking its global workforce of 5,400 by 270 while also predicting the publisher would see the “third straight year of overall revenue growth.”

According to the union, while five-percent of the overall workforce has been targeted, the company is looking to fire 20-percent of workers in the Condé Nast unit, which would amount to an unfair labor practice. Condé Nast did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

While the strikers chants echoed around the World Trade Center complex, Variety reported that actress Anne Hathaway, a member of SAG-AFTRA, was in hair and make-up in preparation for a Condé Nast photo shoot when she opted to walk out in solidarity with the strikers. Ironically, Hathaway’s signature performance in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, as the earnest editorial assistant Andrea “Andy” Sears to Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep, offered a behind-the-scenes depiction of the haute couture fashion world widely believed to be based on Condé Nast’s Vogue.

Meanwhile, on the ground at Tuesday’s picket line, SAG-AFTRA’s members in their black tee shirts were well represented. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander (D) and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine were also on hand and addressed the strikers and their supporters.

“I support the Condé Nast Union,” Levine told the crowd. “I support you now as you face these layoffs. We are going to fight back with everything we’ve got to get you a fair contract to stop these layoffs — to keep this business in Manhattan — to keep human beings doing this work — we need you.”

Lander recounted how in 2022 he wore a News Guild CWA button, amidst the early days of the union organizing drive, to the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Opera to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute that is chaired by Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue and chief content officer for Condé Nast.

“I talked to Anna Wintour on behalf of the workers to say your workers are so proud of this brand that you have got to be proud of them, and I was encouraged when they [the company] voluntarily recognized the Condé Nast union. But recognition without good faith bargaining for a first contract is no good — and the disproportionate laying-off of your union staff is union-busting,” Lander told the crowd.

In an internal memo last fall, obtained by the Messenger, Condé Nast CEO Lynch wrote the layoffs were necessary because the publisher’s audiences, technology, and what advertisers’ expectations had of the company were all changing. “With all of this change surrounding us, the only certain mistake is to not change ourselves,” Lynch explained to colleagues..

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